rust_brittany Took away 2 stars for the movie filming, directing, looonnnggg/repetitive story line, horrible fight sences, and boringness. Added 8 stars for Chris Hemsworth eye candy and acting. This movie is a solid 3-4 when you are bored. He brought it WAY up.

mm-39 Black Hat one can write that Chris Hemsworth took the money and ran very fast with this one! What did not work: Too much did not work here: All the characters played the tough alpha male role. In today's cutler everything in movies has to be the same which makes for horrible character development. There is no balance between characters and or levity. Usually married couple, best friends etc balance each other out, with one being introverted the other extroverted etc! Bad movie characters like in Black Hat have no development. Blackhat's bad movie characters create disjointed scenes which creates one awful movies. Too make matters worse add Blackhat's plot holes, and story gaps your watching a big time awful movie. How does one meet a computer at a Korean restaurant? No idea with the story line here. Suddenly these bad guys show up for no reasons for an action sequence. I just became totally lost with the film. Confusion is how I felt watching this disjointed and confusingly awkward story. Fell asleep for the second half movie. Avoid this dog of a movie. 2 stars out of 10.

robertasmith I have mixed feelings about this. It's not particularly well written and on the Netflix version I watched I had to adjust volume a few times. I remember having to do that with an early Mann film, The Keep, so I wonder if it is something he does as a director. If so, it's annoying.The story has real potential but the skills given to the main character just seem too far fetched, particularly his fighting skills.I like the idea of China and the USA having to pool knowledge and resources but that part is not examined enough and the film is just a vehicle for the lead actor to flash his biceps and deliver poorly written dialogue in a stilted way. His co stars do their best but the Director makes it all about a frankly unbelievable main character.

Jumbo I really enjoyed this film.I have little to no idea about hacking, but I was able to keep up with the plot and really enjoyed it throughout. Michael Mann is definitely a serious director with loads of slomo sequences of people looking very stern and then having sex very intensely, it could be so stupid but he treads a thin line really well. This film is certainly of a piece with the rest of his work (I haven't seem Ali,), there are some familiar characters and tropes at work here, if you're a fan (I am) it's definitely not a bad thing.Some of the camera-work during the action sequences was really engrossing, he really got right in there and made It feel appropriately brutal and frenetic. I especially love the mixing of wide angle shots and what felt more conventional coverage, really cool, really crafted an atmosphere, And his music is always great, from Tangerine Dream onwards it's been cool!I think Mann is a director who still tries to push things forward, from experimenting with the audio perspective on Public Enemy to Hi-Def cameras on Collateral, I think he tries stuff out and commits which is commendable with so much money behind you, it's easy to not try anything new and then call putting up a Greenscreen the future. For all his experimenting he definitely has got a style which I think I would describe as being the good side of 80's. He reminds me a little of Friedkin, they both used Tangerine Dream!Viola Davis was really cool in this, she has some great delivery of very cutting lines.I never want to like Chris Hemsworth, he's too ripped to be a computer nerd and way too handsome. But I actually didn't question any of that once it got going, despite my want for him to be annoying he's a really likable actor and although at first I thought the accent was gonna be a bit dodgy, once again I went with it (on second thought this could be because he doesn't really say a lot and has a good line in looking moody).I liked the plot. I liked the bad guys! I like that they were awfully nasty but then turned around and seemed to care about their mate who was gonna die. Nice touch!I missed this at the cinema and assumed it was gonna be rubbish because it had a tiny release over here, but it was great! My girlfriend really enjoyed it too, although she couldn't keep up with the hacking stuff and nearly ruined the film asking me questions. That's not a criticism of this film though that's definitely on her.Apparently this isn't for everyone but I don't know why, I thought it was great and sadly overlooked.